Cantus Index (http://cantusindex.org) is a catalogue of chants for Office and Mass with their standardized full text and Cantus ID. It is a system for automatic assigning of Cantus IDs to the new chants found in manuscripts. Cantus Index is able to search in the integrated manuscript databases (such as Cantus Manuscript Database) for chant concordances in manuscripts.

Chants listed in the Cantus Index contain only 4 data fields:

1. Full-text

2. Genre

3. Feast (not required)

4. Cantus ID

NOTE: The Cantus Index replaced the former "Master chant table" in the Cantus Manuscript Database.

Cantus Manuscript Database (http://cantus.uwaterloo.ca) contains complete inventories of chants in medieval books. Every chant in the Cantus Manuscript Database has a reference to the Cantus Index via Cantus ID number.

Adding a new chant into Cantus Index

If the new chant is quite similar to another chant of the same genre, enter the Cantus ID of the similar chant. The new text will receive this number plus a “variant” .1, .2, .3, etc. suffix. Use this option for long and short versions of a text where the beginnings are similar, when a phrase has been added in the middle, or in other circumstances when texts exhibit such close relationships.

Do not create a new Cantus ID if the text adds or subtracts the word “alleluia” within or at the end, it substitutes a different word of the same meaning, the difference is only of word order, or there is the addition or subtraction of a very few words in one or more places.